"One of our party was taken sick with mountain fever; so I had to put him into a wagon and take him to San Jose. And when I got there I concluded to go to work in my sawmill, instead of going back to the mines. I commenced making lumber and sold it at $50 per thousand. I kept on raising the price; and in 1849 it went up to $300 per thousand at the mill; and everything else was high in proportion. Flour sold at $30 a barrel. In 1849 everything was booming at San Jose. "There were only five houses in San Francisco in 1847: the custom's house, post-office, Leigdoff's store, and a tavern kept by Mr. Bennett. There was not a wharf in the place until the fall of 1847. Mr. Clark, a man who crossed the Plains with me, put up the first wharf, running it out from Clark's Point which was named for him. The first town lots were laid off in 1847. They made the streets only eighty feet wide; but in 1850 they found the streets were too narrow; so they moved the buildings back twenty feet on the main streets. One can hardly believe that there could be such a change made in fifty-two years. San Jose was an old Spanish town. In the fall of 1847 the Alcalde issued a proclamation calling all the citizens together who were living on the town land to survey off the town into lots and to release the remainder of the land that belonged to the town under the Spanish law. So they found there were forty families entitled to land. They surveyed it off in five acre tracts and gave each one a lease for ninety-nine years. This is called the San Jose Forty Thieves; but being done under the Spanish law the title is good. I helped to survey the town in 1847 ... At this time there was not an American living in San Jose except a few who had been there for twenty years and had Spanish families. The Alcalde was a shrewd Englishman and was appointed by the governor.'' As to the first Protestant sermon in California, "in December 1846, there was a local Methodist preacher, who crossed the Plains with us, preached a funeral sermon aver the remains of the daughter of Capt. Arom who had died just before Christmas ... The minister's name was Heacock. The sermon was preached in old Santa Clara Mission." (Note: Because of the details of life among the first Americans and in crossing the Plains, it has seemed best to omit practically nothing from Mr. Campbell's articles. To understand the route across the Plains, the places named might be put into the present states of their location: Independence was not far from Kansas City of today on the Missouri River at the western boundary of Missouri; farther northwest is the Platte River crossing the state of Nebraska; Ft. Laramie is in the eastern edge of Wyoming, about a third of the way from the southeast corner; continuing fairly westward across Wyoming up the Sweetwater River leads through the pass of the Rockies known as South Pass. (Ft. Bridger is farther south in the very southwest corner of Wyoming; it would seem that the main body of the immigrant train did not bend south to Ft. Bridger, but that the Donner Party left the others and passing through Ft. Bridger went on southwestward through Utah and then westward through Nevada to the Truckee River where Reno now is.) The main part of the train continued westward across the Bear River in southeastern Idaho to Ft. Hall where they first touch the Snake River, followed the Snake halfway across the southern edge of Idaho (the route they were following to this point was the Oregon Trail) but at the Goose Creek which flowed from the south they turned south into Nevada and on the Humboldt and Truckee followed approximately the present Lincoln Highway.) William G. Campbell not only surveyed the streets of San Jose (Bancroft says the survey was in charge of William and Thomas Campbell) but also the streets of San Francisco in 1847 (his sons being of the party). There his wife Agnes Hancock Campbell died and was buried in an old burying ground over which Market Street was surveyed; her dust still rests under the street. David Campbell also surveyed Spanish grants in the San Joaquin Valley, according to Miss Owen's account. According to T. A. Cutting, author of the Historical Sketch of Campbell (the town in Santa Clara Valley) during the Mexican War trouble Benjamin Campbell was enlisted with the company guarding the Mission, and William and David were in the Salinas fight and the Santa Clara battle at which Sanchez was defeated (January 2, 1847); also "William Campbell, who early set up as a merchant in San Jose, manufactured a curious threshing machine for the ripened grain . . . .The idea of adobe houses did not appeal to the newcomers" - hence the sawmill. Benjamin Campbell piloted in 1852 to California (his third trip) the Lovells, the Ruckers, the Finleys, and the Robert Campbells. -- Steve Williams [email protected] California Pioneer Project http://www.compuology.com/cpl/ Tulare County GenWeb Page http://www.compuology.com/cagenweb/tularcty.htm